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by viknesh 1018 days ago
They really aren't that arbitrary, except for 110, but even that is reasonable given our decimal system:

* Arbitrary but socially meaningful geographic boundary. Basically, a notable US city.

* 1 year intervals are actually canonical given that years are based on Earth's rotation

* Gregorian calendar / starting at Jan 1 is again socially meaningful, but in particular doesn't split summers in the northern hemisphere

* 110 and imperial are sensible given usage of Fahrenheit and decimal systems in the US.

Your comment makes it sound like the article is making a claim equally as meaningful as "at latlng 53.193,38.8493, Earth's temperature has been above 482.3 kelvin for 4 of the past 3952 days" which is really not.

Yeah, there's definitely some "p hacking" to make spin this into a newsworthy headline, but not nearly to the degree your comment makes it seem. And not to mention the issue of "110f in Phoenix" has been newsworthy previously (eg 3 straight weeks of 110+), it makes even more sense.

1 comments

>socially meaningful geographic boundary

For you ... and maybe a minor percentage of the US, which, btw, makes up only 4% of the total world population.

>again socially meaningful

As I commented elsewhere, nature doesn't care when you start counting days.

>110 and imperial are sensible given usage of Fahrenheit and decimal systems in the US.

And so? Countries that use Celsius are warmer? Colder?

>the issue of "110f in Phoenix" has been newsworthy previously

Do you live in Phoenix? This is the first I've ever come across such piece of news. Ever.

> For you ... and maybe a minor percentage of the US, which, btw, makes up only 4% of the total world population.

Yes truly strange to find a discussion about the American city of Phoenix here on this website given that the US “only” has 4% of the world’s population.